Author : Justin Martin
Publisher : Da Capo Press
Page : 494 pages
File Size : 26,40 MB
Release : 2011-05-31
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 0306818817
This definitive, first full-scale biography of Olmsted--famed designer of New York's Central Park--reveals him also as a brilliant political and social reformer.
Author : Jennifer Ott
Publisher : Historylink
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 34,33 MB
Release : 2019
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9781933245560
In the midst of galloping growth at the turn of the twentieth century, Seattle's city leaders seized on the confluence of a roaring economy with the City Beautiful movement to hire the Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm to design a park and parkway system. Their 1903 plan led to a supplemental plan, a playground plan, numerous park and boulevard designs, changes to park system management, and a ripple effect, as the Olmsted Brothers were hired to design public and private landscapes throughout the region. The park system shaped Seattle's character and continues to play a key role in the city's livability today.
Author : Frederick Law Olmsted
Publisher : Library of America
Page : 1162 pages
File Size : 10,71 MB
Release : 2016-01-05
Category : History
ISBN : 1598534602
The biggest and best single-volume collection ever published of the fascinating and wide-ranging writings of a vitally important nineteenth century cultural figure whose work continues to shape our world today. Seaman, farmer, abolitionist, journalist, administrator, reformer, conservationist, and without question America’s foremost landscape architect and urban planner, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) was a man of unusually diverse talents and interests, and the arc of his life and writings traces the most significant developments of nineteenth century American history. As this volume reveals, the wide-ranging endeavors Olmsted was involved in—cofounding The Nation magazine, advocating against slavery, serving as executive secretary to the United States Sanitary Commission (precursor to the Red Cross) during the Civil War, championing the preservation of America’s great wild places at Yosemite and Yellowstone—emerged from his steadfast commitment to what he called “communitiveness,” the impulse to serve the needs of one’s fellow citizens. This philosophy had its ultimate expression is his brilliant designs for some of the country’s most beloved public spaces: New York’s Central Park, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Boston’s “Emerald Necklace,” the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina, the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, garden suburbs like Chicago’s Riverside, parkways (a term he invented) and college campuses, the “White City” of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, and many others. Gathering almost 100 original letters, newspaper dispatches, travel sketches, essays, editorials, design proposals, official reports, reflections on aesthetics, and autobiographical reminiscences, this deluxe Library of America volume is profusely illustrated with a 32-page color portfolio of Olmsted’s design sketches, architectural plans, and contemporary photographs. It also includes detailed explanatory notes and a chronology of Olmsted’s life and design projects. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
Author : Kathryn S. Olmsted
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 335 pages
File Size : 11,4 MB
Release : 2009-01-02
Category : History
ISBN : 019972024X
Many Americans believe that their own government is guilty of shocking crimes. Government agents shot the president. They faked the moon landing. They stood by and allowed the murders of 2,400 servicemen in Hawaii. Although paranoia has been a feature of the American scene since the birth of the Republic, in Real Enemies Kathryn Olmsted shows that it was only in the twentieth century that strange and unlikely conspiracy theories became central to American politics. In particular, she posits World War I as a critical turning point and shows that as the federal bureaucracy expanded, Americans grew more fearful of the government itself--the military, the intelligence community, and even the President. Analyzing the wide-spread suspicions surrounding such events as Pearl Harbor, the JFK assassination, Watergate, and 9/11, Olmsted sheds light on why so many Americans believe that their government conspires against them, why more people believe these theories over time, and how real conspiracies--such as the infamous Northwoods plan--have fueled our paranoia about the governments we ourselves elect.
Author : Tony Horwitz
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 514 pages
File Size : 28,30 MB
Release : 2020-05-12
Category : History
ISBN : 1101980303
The New York Times-bestselling final book by the beloved, Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Tony Horwitz. With Spying on the South, the best-selling author of Confederates in the Attic returns to the South and the Civil War era for an epic adventure on the trail of America's greatest landscape architect. In the 1850s, the young Frederick Law Olmsted was adrift, a restless farmer and dreamer in search of a mission. He found it during an extraordinary journey, as an undercover correspondent in the South for the up-and-coming New York Times. For the Connecticut Yankee, pen name "Yeoman," the South was alien, often hostile territory. Yet Olmsted traveled for 14 months, by horseback, steamboat, and stagecoach, seeking dialogue and common ground. His vivid dispatches about the lives and beliefs of Southerners were revelatory for readers of his day, and Yeoman's remarkable trek also reshaped the American landscape, as Olmsted sought to reform his own society by creating democratic spaces for the uplift of all. The result: Central Park and Olmsted's career as America's first and foremost landscape architect. Tony Horwitz rediscovers Yeoman Olmsted amidst the discord and polarization of our own time. Is America still one country? In search of answers, and his own adventures, Horwitz follows Olmsted's tracks and often his mode of transport (including muleback): through Appalachia, down the Mississippi River, into bayou Louisiana, and across Texas to the contested Mexican borderland. Venturing far off beaten paths, Horwitz uncovers bracing vestiges and strange new mutations of the Cotton Kingdom. Horwitz's intrepid and often hilarious journey through an outsized American landscape is a masterpiece in the tradition of Great Plains, Bad Land, and the author's own classic, Confederates in the Attic.
Author : Rolf Diamant
Publisher :
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 44,33 MB
Release : 2022-02
Category :
ISBN : 9781952620348
Both Central Park in New York and Yosemite Valley in California became public parks during the tumultuous years before and during the Civil War. Rolf Diamant and Ethan Carr demonstrate how anti-slavery activism, war, and the remaking of the federal government gave rise to the American public park and concept of national parks. The authors closely examine Frederick Law Olmsted's 1865 Yosemite Report--the key document that expresses the aspirational vision of making great public parks keystone institutions of a renewed liberal democracy.
Author : Kathryn S. Olmsted
Publisher : The New Press
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 30,40 MB
Release : 2015
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1620970961
In a major reassessment of modern conservatism, noted historian Kathryn S. Olmsted reexamines the explosive labor disputes in the agricultural fields of Depression-era California, the cauldron that inspired a generation of artists and writers and that triggered the intervention of FDR's New Deal. Right Out of California tells how this brief moment of upheaval terrified business leaders into rethinking their relationship to American politics--a narrative that pits a ruthless generation of growers against a passionate cast of reformers, writers, and revolutionaries. Olmsted reveals how California's businessmen learned the language of populism with the help of allies in the media and entertainment industries, and in the process created a new style of politics: corporate funding of grassroots groups, military-style intelligence gathering against political enemies, professional campaign consultants, and alliances between religious and economic conservatives. The business leaders who battled for the hearts and minds of Depression-era California, moreover, would go on to create the organizations that launched the careers of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. A riveting history in its own right, Right Out of California is also a vital chapter in our nation's political transformation whose echoes are still felt today.
Author : Larry Olmsted
Publisher : Algonquin Books
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 43,55 MB
Release : 2021-03-02
Category : Sports & Recreation
ISBN : 1616208465
“Olmsted opens a window into a psychologically compelling world of passion and purpose.” —Harvey Araton, author of Our Last Season: A Writer, a Fan, a Friendship Larry Olmsted’s writing and research have been called “eye-opening” (People), “impressive” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), and “enlightening” (Kirkus Reviews). Now, the New York Times and Washington Post bestselling author turns his expertise to a subject that has never been fully explored, delivering a highly entertaining game changer that uses brand-new research to show us why being a sports fan is good for us individually and is a force for positive change in society. Fans is a passionate reminder of how games, teams, and the communities dedicated to them are vital to our lives. Citing fascinating new studies on sports fandom, Larry Olmsted makes the case that the more you identify with a sports team, the better your social, psychological, and physical health is; the more meaningful your relationships are; and the more connected and happier you are. Fans maintain better cognitive processing as their gray matter ages; they have better language skills; and college students who follow sports have higher GPAs, better graduation rates, and higher incomes after graduating. And there’s more: On a societal level, sports help us heal after tragedies, providing community and hope when we need it most. Fans is the perfect gift for anyone who loves sports or anyone who loves someone who loves sports.
Author : Laura Wood Roper
Publisher : Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press
Page : 555 pages
File Size : 47,14 MB
Release : 1983
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780801830181
Olmsted's youth and intellectual development are discussed in addition to the diversity of his career and his lifelong concern for his country's welfare
Author : Witold Rybczynski
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 430 pages
File Size : 14,38 MB
Release : 2013-07-23
Category : History
ISBN : 1439125104
In a brilliant collaboration between writer and subject, Witold Rybczynski, the bestselling author of Home and City Life, illuminates Frederick Law Olmsted's role as a major cultural figure at the epicenter of nineteenth-century American history. We know Olmsted through the physical legacy of his stunning landscapes -- among them, New York's Central Park, California's Stanford University campus, and Boston's Back Bay Fens. But Olmsted's contemporaries knew a man of even more extraordinarily diverse talents. Born in 1822, he traveled to China on a merchant ship at the age of twenty-one. He cofounded The Nation magazine and was an early voice against slavery. He managed California's largest gold mine and, during the Civil War, served as the executive secretary to the United States Sanitary Commission, the precursor of the Red Cross. Rybczynski's passion for his subject and his understanding of Olmsted's immense complexity and accomplishments make his book a triumphant work. In A Clearing in the Distance, the story of a great nineteenth-century American becomes an intellectual adventure.
